The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of
One recurring question/style of post you see on social media is to tell some kind of "lore" about yourself. I've always took it as this idea that a certain story or anecdote can explain something important about you. I've returned to a couple of bits of "lore" about myself and they explain why exactly I'm launching this endeavor. The first is that the local video rental store (Video Maniacs on Bay Farm Island) had it on my account that I was able to rent R-rated movies without someone over 18 with me (and I spent a preponderance of time in that very video store).
The second is that I was about 13 or 14 when the AFI 100 Years, 100 Films list came out and I made it my goal to watch all those movies on the list that I could. Now, I didn't (and still haven't) completed that list, but it did lead to me watching Casablanca and High Noon and Bridge on the River Kwai (amongst other films) at a very young age.
All this to say I've always been interested in movies starting at that very young age and continuing on. I wrote about Martin Scorsese in my dissertation project. I've taught film classes at both the high school and college level. I've written online about Scorsese in two different locations. I'm an avid listener of You Must Remember This/enormous fan of Karina Longworth. My favorite ride at Disney World, even when I was very young, was The Great Movie Ride. It's a world with which I'm quite familiar and endlessly fascinated. Therefore, I've decided to undergo this project and write regularly about film, both old and new.
The title of this publication draws on two facets of my obsession--the New Hollywood (my favorite era of filmmaking, given that I'm an avowed Scorsese fan) and the Criterion Collection (to whom I have given much of my money, especially during their occasional 50% off sales).
Speaking of older films... on Halloween night, I decided to watch the 1931 Dracula directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi. It felt like a good film to touch upon a spooky mood but not horrific to the point where my sleep might be disturbed. Finally watching it, it's amazing to see just how much of the iconography of Dracula is established in that film, particularly by Lugosi. I was also struck by the moments of weirdness and subversion; specifically, I'm thinking about Dwight Frye's performance as Renfield and how positively bizarre it feels (in the best way). The version I watched did not have the score Philip Glass created for the film in 1998, but I would be interested in hearing that as the lack of score was quite striking. I do think it added to the darkened mood of the film, but I also found it took me out of things ever so slightly. You also see, in the way darkness and light are used with Lugosi's eyes, the beginnings of cinematography as we know and understand it.
But the degree to which my understanding of Dracula came from this movie made it astounding to watch the actual film (it was also strange to have first watched Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel and to see how much draws on this 1931 film and then where it differs).
I also offer this up to give you a taste of what I want to do and how I like to discuss film in addition to introducing myself and this project a bit. I really hope you will read, enjoy, and join in/participate.